In network architectures, an operating system (OS) may virtualize network hardware into a set of logical communication endpoints and multiplex access to the hardware among these endpoints (e.g., computers, servers and/or I/O devices). The operating system (OS) may also implement protocols that make communication between connected endpoints reliable (e.g., transmission control protocol, TCP).
The operating system (OS) may receive a request to send a message (data) and a virtual address that specifies the location of the data associated with the message, copy the message into a message buffer and translate the virtual address. The OS may then schedule a memory copy operation to copy data from the message buffer memory to a target device. A translation and protection table (TPT) may be used to translate the virtual address, received in the form of descriptors or work queues, into physical addresses and to define memory regions before a host network adapter can access them (e.g., for transfer to/from a remote device) during data transfer (movement) operations. There is a need for a more efficient technique of using and accessing the translation and protection table (TPT) to perform virtual-to-physical address translations while providing additional memory access protection during data transfer operations.